


Forbidden

by writing_way_too_much



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Open Ending, i love this one, it's one of my favorites that i've written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 05:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11502387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_way_too_much/pseuds/writing_way_too_much
Summary: Falling for him was forbidden.But that wasn't to say it didn't happen anyway.





	Forbidden

Meeting him was forbidden.

He was tall, taller than she was. He was handsome, with a freckled face and long curly hair that was hanging loose. He had a smile that captured her attention. He walked over to her during the ball and bowed.

“May I have this dance?”

“You may,” she allowed, and he took her left hand with both of his and kissed it, a feather of a kiss, and the place where his lips had touched her skin burned.

He was a terrible dancer, tripping over his own feet, and he didn’t know where to put his hands. She gently guided him through the motions, desperately holding back an unladylike snort of laughter. His face grew redder and redder, and when she finally laughed when he tried and failed to twirl her, a grin broke out over his features.

“You’re awful at this,” she remarked.

“I know,” he said breathlessly. “I just wanted an excuse to talk to you.”

Now she was the one blushing.

“What is your name, kind sir?” she asked.

“Philip Hamilton,” he said, ducking his head. “I know, I know.”

“I’m Martha Jefferson,” she said. “I know, too.”

They danced for the rest of the night, staring into each other’s eyes. She felt special as he drank in every detail of her face, and she memorized the lines and angles of his.

“Martha!”

“I have to go,” she said. “My father is calling me.”

He pressed another kiss to the back of her hand, the right one this time. “Goodnight, my lady.”

“Goodnight, kind sir.”

~

Talking to him was forbidden.

She told her father elaborate stories of what she had done in town that day. He accepted them all without a second thought.

But she was really with him.

He kept finding out-of-the-way spots for them to talk. Under a tree in the woods, the top floor of a sun-drenched cafe, walking along the country roads.

She laughed more than she had in her life before this. His grin became her favorite thing to see. She told him everything about herself, her dreams, her aspirations, her likes and dislikes, even trivial things like her favorite flower.

He brought her a bunch of those flowers and presented them all too grandly to her.

She took them home and put them in a vase in her bedroom and didn’t let anyone see them.

She wrote him a letter and gave it to him at their next meeting. She looked off while he read it and wouldn’t look at him when he finished. She suddenly hated that she’d poured out her feelings onto paper, and wanted to cry.

He gently took her hand. “Martha, that was beautiful. I’ve never read a poem that struck me so deeply before.”

She turned her head to see him, and he was smiling at her, and she knew it was okay.

~

Kissing him was forbidden.

She’d initiated the kiss, had asked to see him after sundown on the river shore, and he’d come, and she had reached for him, traced a finger over his cheekbones, and then kissed him.

Fireworks went off in the pit of her stomach.

He deepened the kiss, and she finally broke away, gasping for air. “Philip,” she said, over and over. “Philip, Philip, Philip.”

“My Martha,” he whispered, bringing her lips to his again.

She had never felt this way before, and she liked it.

~

  
Telling anyone was forbidden.

“What are you so happy about, Martha?” her father asked. Startled, she set down her needlework, suddenly aware that she had been humming.

“Nothing, Father,” she said, trembling a bit and hoping that he didn’t pry further.

However, Thomas Jefferson was not a man to give up easily. “Then why are you humming? You haven’t hummed since your mother first got sick.”

“Maybe I’m just happy, okay?” she fired back, and her father looked taken aback.

“Martha, I was only curious. Have you met someone?”

She desperately wanted to tell him yes, but he’d ask who it was, and then he’d make sure she never saw Philip again.

“No, Father.”

She gathered up her needlework and retreated to her room.

~

Falling for him was forbidden.

But that wasn’t to say it didn’t happen anyway.

She realized it when it rained during one of their meetings and he gave her his coat to wear. Shivering underneath the fabric, she looked at this kind-hearted man, and her heart swelled. Words rose to her lips, words that could ruin everything if she spoke them.

She was past risks.

She stretched up on tiptoe and placed her mouth by his ear. “I love you,” she whispered, and he tilted his head sideways.

“I love you,” he said, fitting their mouths together. Passersby saw a young couple kissing under an awning and thought,  _how cute, they’re in love_.

“I’ve fallen for you,” she confessed. “And that’s bad.”

“Why? Is it really so despicable to love me?” he asked, hurt clear in his smooth voice.

“It’s bad because I can’t openly love you. Our fathers hate each other and would never approve.”

“Martha, let me tell you…” She loved the way he said her name. “Ever since that first ball, when I saw you, I was yours. It took forever to gather enough courage to ask you to dance. You were beautiful, formidable, powerful, everything. You let me into your life and I’ve never been more grateful.”

Love is a rare and strange thing. It tears you apart yet completes you.

She was in love with him, he was in love with her, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

~

Sleeping with him was forbidden.

It was an unwritten law that you were to wait until marriage.

But one night, her father was gone, and he was let out of the house for the night, and he came over, and they kissed in her bed, and it got more and more passionate, and then he reached for the buttons on the back of her dress, asking  _can I?_  with his eyes, and she nodded,  _yes yes yes_ , and clothes came off and they were so close and she was in love, deeply in love, and nothing mattered except his skin against hers, his body intertwined with hers, that moment, right then.

She chose to not think of the hell they’d get from their families and instead focused on him.

~

Meeting him in the open, in public, was forbidden.

It also got them discovered.

“Hi,” she breathed, and he bent slightly to press his lips to hers. She melted into the kiss, and he pulled away much too soon.

“Hello there, gorgeous,” he murmured, and it felt like sunshine sliding through her veins to know his voice was for her. He intertwined his fingers with hers, and footsteps sounded behind the pair.

“Philip, I was wonder–oh. Oh. Oh.”

“Shit,” Philip said, abruptly yanking his hand out of hers. “Shit, shit, shit.”

His little brother was standing there, eyes wide. “You…you…isn’t that Martha Jefferson?”

She wanted to be scared, terrified, wanted to run and never look back, but some unknown strength rose up in her and she looked the young boy straight in the eyes. “Yes, I am Martha Jefferson. Pleased to make your acquaintance, although it’s unfortunate that it must be under such circumstances.”

The young boy grinned and then took off in the direction he had come from, calling, “Mother! Father! Philip did a bad thing!”

The subject of his shouts turned to her with fear evident in his eyes. “My father will skin me. My mother won’t understand. Martha, Martha, I can’t be without you, but…” He trailed off and she let a single tear fall.

“I know, I know. Shh.” She kissed him, one last time, and since there was a possibility of it being their last kiss, she made it count, slow and sweet, full of all the love she felt for him.

~

Pining for him was forbidden.

Being under house arrest was quite possibly the most boring punishment in the world.

She sewed countless pillows, took the seams out of all of her dresses and put them back in, read many books, wrote poems that she burned, and stared out the window, watching the weather.

It was June, summertime. The sun was in the sky for the majority of the day. Clouds sometimes drifted across the expanse of blue. On the days when it rained, she was transfixed by the drops, noting the patterns they made. She tried to paint the scene, tried to draw it, tried to describe it with words. Nothing worked.

June finished and she let herself cry.

She thought of him every mindless day, accidentally stitched his name inside of a heart, cherished every memory she had of him, remembered the feel of his lips on hers, his skin against hers. She remembered what it felt like when he brought her little bouquets of flowers and even sang her a song once.

It was mid-July before her father even spoke to her.

She had been singing a lot recently to pass the time. A few weeks prior, she had made the mistake of not talking at all, simply because there was nobody to listen, but then her throat was terribly dry and words came out cracked all over.

There was a knock on her door, and she knew it was her father.

“Martha?”

She stopped singing.

“May I come in?”

Part of her wanted to say no, but the other part–the part that had been planning how to escape this hell, how to find Philip and get out of here–recalled that part of the plan was to make her father trust her again.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

Her father came in and perched on the edge of her bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked after an extremely awkward silence.

“This reason,” she said, her voice tinged with bitterness, gesturing to her room. “I knew you’d never let me see him again. Better to meet in secret than not meet at all.”

“The only thing I have ever wanted is to see you happy,” her father whispered, and she actually laughed at that. He looked hurt. “Honestly. When your mother died, I thought you would die too. You were so young, and the sickness was so severe…but you pulled through. You’re a fighter, always have been. I gave you everything you could have possibly wanted.”

“But, Father, it wasn’t enough,” she said bluntly. He visibly winced.

“I’m sorry.”

“If you’re truly sorry, you’d let me out of this damn room. You’d let me see him.”

“I cannot.”

“Why? Why not? I love him, Father, I really do, and if you actually want me to be happy, you’d let me be with him instead of imprisoning me!”

“He is a Hamilton.”

“So?”

“That family is a disgrace to the country.”

She was on her feet now, eyes blazing, fists clenched at her sides. “No they are not. Mr. Hamilton is a genius–shut up, everybody knows that! Mrs. Hamilton is endlessly kind. Their children are smart, educated, proper, and caring, Philip especially. I will not have you insulting the Hamiltons!”

Her father looked completely taken aback. “I did not raise you to be like this, to take pleasure in the company of the son of my sworn enemy.”

“Then maybe you raised me wrong! Maybe Mother would’ve let me live my life and make my own decisions!”

Silence, crystal-clear and charged with emotion, hung over the room.

Her father’s eyes were shadowed.

Her mother was off-limits. They never discussed the elder Martha Jefferson. She knew her father was still heartbroken over her mother’s death, and that she should be too. But she’d moved on. It had been fourteen years. She was a legal adult woman now. Grief had no place in her life.

“You are in some very dangerous territory, young lady,” her father warned.

She rolled her eyes. “As if I wasn’t in a load of shit already.”

“When did you develop a sailor’s mouth? He’s a bad influence on you.”

“No, being locked up in here for months gave me a sailor’s mouth. I’ve had plenty of time to think of what I want to say to you.”

Her father’s eyes held a challenge. “Then say it.”

She took a deep breath. She hadn’t actually thought of something to say. Dimly, the voice of reason in the back of her head told her that her plan was failing at step one, but she ignored it. “Get the hell out of my room.”

Her father did.

~

Shattering her window and climbing down the rose trellis in the middle of the night was forbidden.

She did it anyway.

Her patience had finally worn through.

She was wearing pants instead of a dress, sewn from what had been a simple frock. The only thing she was carrying was a small cloth sack with some of her most prized possessions, as much money as would fit, and a bit of food in it. She ran quietly through the huge yard of Monticello and made it to the stables without being discovered. She saddled up a horse and stuffed her sack in the saddlebags.

Guiding the horse out to the road without making a sound was difficult. But she managed anyway, her heart threatening to beat out of her chest at every soft snorting sound the horse made.

Riding the horse to the Hamilton house was much, much easier. She could go as fast as she needed and make noise without worrying. The journey was far too long, and she stopped her horse at the gate, walking the rest of the way.

“Philip!” she called softly.

He stuck his head out of a window. “Martha.” A tired smile broke out over his face. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“No worries,” she reassured him. “I’ve had a plan this whole time.”

“When do you not?”

He awkwardly eased his way out of the window. It was a ground-floor room, so he didn’t have to climb down a wall. She said a silent prayer of thanks for that.

The second his boots securely touched the ground, she reached for him. He knew what she wanted and kissed her, roughly. She savored every second of that kiss.

“Pip?”

“Damn it,” she breathed, hearing the small voice.

“I thought you were stayin’ in your room,” the voice continued. It was one of his many siblings.

“No, I’m…leaving. With Martha,” Philip said, and she slipped her hand into his.

“I won’t tell,” the child said. “Bye, Pip, lemme hug you.”  
Philip leaned in and hugged his sibling. “Tell Mother and Father that I do love them.”

The child nodded solemnly–Martha could see the shadows dancing.

She tugged Philip away.

He got his horse saddled and together, they rode away into the night, traveling a great distance, renting a room at an inn in a different state. Then they set off together. Nobody knew where they went except the two of them.

Philip Hamilton didn’t die in a duel defending his father’s honor.

Martha Jefferson didn’t die of the same illness her mother had.

They vanished off into the night, going somewhere. Together.

Searching for a place where their love wouldn’t be forbidden.

**Author's Note:**

> this is also posted on my dead sideblog @fluffmilton on tumblr but if you wanna chat, hit me up @bestfluteninja
> 
> comments and kudos are always appreciated <3


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